


It Takes Half a Curium to Fall in Love

by FourthFloorWrites



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe Lost Light, Character Study, Drabble, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Ratchet is a Lovestruck Fool, Robotic Conceptions of Time, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 05:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21030947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourthFloorWrites/pseuds/FourthFloorWrites
Summary: The Lost Light is trying to decide the best way to measure time, but Ratchet already knows how he plans to count his days.





	It Takes Half a Curium to Fall in Love

There had been multiple efforts to install a system by which to measure time in their new universe. They’d started with the Cybertronian calendar by habit, but several hundred stellar cycles into their voyage had come to realize that there might be more practical options, ones that did not rely on the position of a planet that had A) been destroyed in one universe and B) never existed in another. They had tried the Numeron decimal system for five kilos, and then a humul with the Unetrium system. They had even spent several days humoring various systems from Earth and come to the conclusion that none of them had been developed with any sort of strategic plan in mind. It was Brainstorm who suggested something based off of the half-lives of certain compounds in the artificial energon Perceptor had developed, and the rest of the science team had taken to it in one hundred-thousandth of a plutonium.

Ratchet, though, would not be so easily swayed. Brainstorm’s attempts to convince the medic of the benefits of a scientifically sound and provable system of time measurement resulted in a swat, and a promise there would be much worse if he didn’t clear out of the med bay in five spark rotations. Luckily for both, Drift, served by instincts older than the war itself, happened to be on the lower decks at the same time trouble was starting. Standing just outside the door, he reminded Brainstorm that the ship’s second-in-command would want a detailed report of the new system before the medical staff were licensed to use it.

“Are you planning to explain it to him?” Brainstorm asked, attention still mostly dedicated to Ratchet. Beneath the haughtiness was a subtle peculiarity that Ratchet had come to recognize since he’d taken the ritus with Drift: a question, from a fringe Decepticon to the real deal, of intent. Separate from (but no less baffling than) the usual hesitance inspired by Ratchet’s conjunx endura, Brainstorm always spoke to Drift as though fishing for some deeper meaning, a threat intended but not spoken aloud.

Ratchet had asked Drift about it not long after their honeymoon, when the bliss of isolated togetherness was still weighing on their processors and the usual clamor of a spaceship full of mechs sounded much louder than it had before they left. The answer, some combination of the command structure, a culture of second intentions, and prestige earned in spilt energon, had been as uncanny to Ratchet as any of the other pieces Drift had been willing to share about his past life, but the fact that he was willing to talk about it at all meant that Ratchet had to stop himself from raising his hackles when he saw the familiar expression pass under Brainstorm’s facemask.

“Actually, I was thinking you and Perceptor might draft it together,” Drift said, stepping inside so the automatic door could close and leaning back comfortably against its frame. “Considering it’s technically a collaboration. It’s an opportunity for him to explain his work to a mech who will not only listen, but _demand_ that he be as thorough as possible. Maybe you could work on it over a couple cubes of engex, see how late Perceptor can stay up describing the chemical properties of energon?” He punctuated the suggestion with an eyebrow wiggle.

Ratchet, despite himself, felt the fire in his spark burn out, replaced with an amusement unbecoming of a mechanism his age.

Brainstorm’s optics brightened and his frame swung fully away from Ratchet, angled toward Drift only because that was the same direction the door was in.

“Now there’s an idea,” he said, as though his legs weren’t already maneuvering him out of the med bay and the entire reason he’d come to this part of the ship. “I suppose he’ll want citations, an annotated bibliography; we’ll definitely have to go searching through Percy’s archives to find those. I’m sure a few experiments to prove the uniformity of the compounds will also be in order?”

“And maybe a couple others, in case you need a backup,” Drift added, stepping out of the way so the signature sensor could detect Brainstorm and open the doors, releasing him back to the rest of the _Lost Light_.

“Doubtful, my system has already been perfected, but thanks for the input,” Brainstorm said, and then he was out the med bay and down the hall, wings twitching like he was just barely keeping himself from transforming and flying straight back to the lab.

Drift stepped forward while the door shut behind him.

“That was a transaction,” Ratchet said as his conjunx approached, quoting the terminology Drift had come up with to explain Brainstorm’s behavior after a previous encounter.

Despite the accusation, he smiled as Drift’s hands reached forward and settled on his waist, allowing his own to come up and wrap around Drift’s shoulders. Both of their frames were slightly scuffed, due for a polish that Ratchet would be able to wriggle his way out of up until their next date night, but their ventilations, when they came, were light and shallow, barely warmer than the room around them. Ratchet’s spark was spinning slowly and comfortably, a rarity these days, in time with the beeping of some equipment he’d been working on when Brainstorm burst in.

Not long after their mutual confession of having broken the keystone rule of a friends-with-benefits arrangement, they had agreed that certain areas of the ship would be off-limits for PDA, to maintain whatever scraps of authority either of them had among the new and returning crewmembers. However, the nature of their adventures, combined with a growing familiarity among all of the ship’s inhabitants, meant the timeline of the _Lost Light_’s journeys in an alternate universe could be measured by the increasing frequency with which they broke those initial guidelines.

The first time the ship made landfall, Drift had been standing on the command deck beside Rodimus, optics out on a horizon that was rising up to meet him; Ratchet had approached from behind and lightly entwined their fingers, waiting until Drift squeezed his consent to squeeze back.

Their first battle with aliens (Guice Nighs, a friendly hitchhiker had later supplied; universally xenophobic and vicious, not to be taken personally) had ended in the hangar, when Drift had launched himself at Ratchet before the latter had even made it down the transport pod ramp, hugging him until he was convinced the frame in his arms was corporeal and real.

The first permanent addition to the roster, a group of about a dozen organics who had been held as prisoners after their home world was destroyed, was finalized with a joint speech between Rodimus and Megatron. At the end of it, as the crowd applauded the co-captains’ earnest effort not to speak over each other for five centis (they were still experimenting with Numeron time then), Drift did as he’d always wanted to in their initial adventures and kissed the love of his life.

The time the _Lost Light_ was shrunk down to the size of an engine block was remembered by an escape pod sized for two. Thoroughly inappropriate use of lifesaving equipment, but they’d cleaned up afterward.

And now, here in the med bay, to mark an occasion of no greater significance than proof that the shenanigans of the crew would continue regardless of time or space, they embraced, engines humming in quiet contentment as they both stared into optics familiar and wondrous.

“It’s a gift,” Drift said, thumbs rubbing small ministrations on Ratchet’s armor, “for my dear Ratty.”

“Oh, really? That’s unexpected,” Ratchet said as one hand reached up to play along the edge of Drift’s finials. He let humor lace his tone. “I hope I didn’t forget another anniversary.”

“No, I promised I would remind you,” Drift said, pushing into Ratchet’s touch with a stuttered sigh.

It wasn’t that Ratchet didn’t care about such things; even if they were commercialized, overhyped, and ultimately meaningless, anniversaries had become a part of Drift’s system of rituals, important to him and therefore important to Ratchet. It was the dates he struggled with, his mind no longer processing time as a linear system.

Instead, at some point along the way, most likely around the time First Aid’s tests had confirmed the pattern of fluctuations of Ratchet’s spark as those brought with a life lived, apparently, long enough, he’d taken to measuring his life by the time he had left with Drift. The universe had been compressed, then expanded, into fuel taken in good company, off shifts spent lying in berth, and long drives on uncharted alien planets. He counted his days by the memories he had left to make and the sum total of all the joy he had left to give and receive. For the rest of the crew, time was a road, opening out before them so far it disappeared over the lip of the horizon, pavement so smooth as to demand that it be driven as soon and as fast as possible.

For Ratchet, it was a closing door, the light it let in shrinking each day closer from a slice to a sliver. In his youth, he had railed against the door, forced it open another inch over and over, fighting to keep the light on all those he held dear to him. Now, though, in his later years, he had finally made a shocking realization: the light was no less bright for there being less of it. He could still feel its warmth and revel in its color, even if he could only watch it dance over his fingers as he held them to the crack. More importantly, his being shut out no longer meant the others would be trapped in darkness. While he’d been forcing the door to stay open, they (Drift) had made their way through, and they would continue to bask in it even after Ratchet finally accepted the gentle caress of the darkness.

So he held Drift, his conjunx endura, where anyone could see, because the light was thin and he intended to love every moment he had left with it.

“And how lucky I am for that,” Ratchet said, meaning every word. “Tell me, how long until the next one?”

**Author's Note:**

> An experiment in writing Dratchet that got out of hand.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on [Tumblr](fourthfloorwrites.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](twitter.com/4thfloorwrites). Otherwise, catch ya next week!


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